How do I transfer photos from 'my pictures' to Picasa?

I removed a virus from my computer and discovered it wiped Picasa clean of all my pictures. The folders are still in my pics but I am having trouble transferring them to Picasa. Can someone help me please?

Picasa never copies or brings photos into itself, it only indexes photos already on your disk and shows you them in their original folders.

If your Photos are still in your My Pictures folders, you only have to tell Picasa where to look for them.

Start Picasa.

Go to the Tools menu -> Folder Manager.

In the tree on the left, Set the My Pictures folder to "Scan Always".

Set any other folders that contain photos to "Scan Always"

Make sure any folders you don't want to see the pictures in are set to "Remove From Picasa"

When you exit the folder manager, Picasa should scan your folders and rebuild the database (index) and edits of the photos.

If you don't see the pictures, the virus may have damaged them or deleted them, so go to the folders that you say are in My Pics and make sure the pictures are still there and can be viewed by double-clicking on them.

If this doesn't work please geve more info on exactly what happened and where the pictures are.

I have done that. A few times actually and Picasa never responds. I have been useing Picasa for years and have had to download a few times because of getting new pc's, etc. The pictures are fine in my pics. Do you think it would work to delete Picasa and download it again?? Thank you for your help!

I don't know much about virus' but it didn't seem really bad. The first thing I did when I removed it was open Picasa to see if everything was ok. It opened up fine and all my pics were there. As I gave a sigh of relief, my screen blinked and everything left. Picasa went blank.

Ok this is getting more confusing. Yes, each folder list has the scan always symbol beside it. I just finished uninstalling Picasa and reinstalling it again. It only put the pictures in that were in before I uninstalled it. Like the ones that I put into Picasa since the virus. None of the folders from a few years ago.

This isn't a reply, but it was the only was I could see to ask you a question. Is there a way to bring in 1 picture into Picasa. I have all of my pictures saved on another drive and I downloaded Picasa for it's editing tools. However, I don't want all of my pictures (or even a lot of my pictures) stored on picasa. I just want to bring in the specific pictures I want to edit. If you're able to, thank you in advance for your help.

Picasa is primarily a picture library management tool with a few edit controls, so the least Picasa can "Watch" is one folder. It will index and show any photos in that folder.

What you could do is set the folder manager to just scan one folder, then when you wanted to edit a photo you could copy it to that folder or move it there using the Windows Explorer file manager. After you were done editing the photo you could save the changes to the photo, then copy it back where it came from.

earl you said picasa never saves the pictures im wondering how do you get it to apply the effects to the original without haveing to move the piture and to have it activate like automaticly after the effects are applied cuz i go to the picture with the same name by search egin and its still uneffected ecept in picasa

for the other issue i woulda said go to file go to add a folder select the option to scan contantly remove the folders you dont need or that you know does not have pictures the blue half circle has it check the photo folders and will update when reopened or a few moments for the background process to be set then it will refresh ya gotta wait a little while though before it starts refreshing